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Written by Katie Thompson
Just when you thought Derren Brown couldn’t get any more sinister, audacious or daring, comes The Assassin, the first in a series of ‘Experiments’, in which the trickster tries to convince his audience that it is possible to hypnotise someone into killing another person.
Like all of his preceding shows, Brown fuses scepticism and mild humour while explaining the fundamentals of mind tricks, however The Assassin has a far more menacing tone: we are reminded at frequent intervals that Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Robert F. Kennedy dead in 1968, had no recollection of the event and claimed to have been hypnotised by the CIA.
Derren tries to test this theory using a multitude of experiments, in order to whittle down his unsuspecting audience members to one final assassin. After hypnotising guests into throwing ‘acid’ into other viewers’ faces, Brown proceeds to convince unwary Chris, the most ‘susceptible’ audience member, to bathe himself in ice water. Oblivious Chris could hardly hurt a fly, but for some reason, he is chosen by Derren to undergo a series of frightening mind techniques which could facilitate his role in the mock assassination of a ‘well-known celebrity.’
In scenes which bear an ominous resemblance to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Chris is trained into recognising a ringtone as an audio cue to point a gun at his unsuspecting victim, who will be holding a talk in a large theatre when the ‘assassination’ will take place. In the final quarter, arguably one of the biggest highlights of the show, we learn that the (in actual fact, suspecting) ‘victim’ is to be Stephen Fry, who takes pleasure in loading himself with squibs before taking to the stage.
The climactic assassination is filmed using hidden cameras so as not to distract Chris from the ‘real’ shooting, which he has no idea he is even a part of. As Fry rather comically falls to the floor, there is little reaction from the audience, who supposedly have no idea this is happening. Alas, Brown saves the day and ‘snaps’ Chris out of his trance, and proceeds to embarrass him by showing the footage of the shooting in the presence of Fry.
While The Assassin is a vast improvement on the embarrassment that was How To Take Down A Casino, the viewer cannot help but feel it is all a little too predictable; everything has been meticulously planned- even Stephen Fry agrees to being shot. The cynics among us will also assume it is all just careful editing and camera trickery rather than actual hypnosis; however the constant references to Sirhan Sirhan do make the viewer wonder if it is really all possible, and Brown’s explanations of each mind trick prove that it is worryingly simple to influence another person’s actions. Nevertheless, Brown’s contemptuous ability to manipulate those around him never fails to entertain, and The Assassin paves the way for an exciting series - even if it is all just smoke and mirrors.
Derren Brown: The Experiments continues on Friday at 9pm with The Gameshow.
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